That is, instead of reading some pages in Murder for Christmas (a collection of murder mystery short stories set at Christmas time…Kind of macabre, I know; maybe it caught my eye because we had just seen Sherlock Holmes the day before I went to the library) before I head to bed in the wee hours of this new year, I will blog.
…Okay. Here I am. And I find myself where I have been now for a matter of months: Sitting before the blank screen, with nothing fresh to write.
I could attempt to say something profound for the new year.
I could vent about Pippin the cat, who no doubt will interrupt me at least another time or two while I sit at the computer tonight.
I could express gratitude for the friends and family with whom we were privileged to ring in another new year a couple of hours ago.
I could tell you that, in some ways, this has been one of the most exciting and, at the same time, one of the most difficult years of my adult life.
I could tell you that it has been challenging for months to be consistent in any kind of regular quiet time of Bible reading and prayer.
I could tell you that some days I nearly lose heart for my country when I listen to the news.
…Now I am getting into that hole, auguring, drilling deeper and deeper into the muck of the common ground of humanity in a fallen world.
This doesn’t sound very new years-ish. Isn’t the new supposed to be a place filled with hope, with bright light that beckons us forward to something better than what we’ve left behind?
In these early hours of 2010, I burst forth with the prophet Jeremiah who, in the midst of his lamentations for what had been and would be lost, “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning; great is Thy faithfulness.” Jeremiah understood. God’s love and God’s mercy and God’s faithfulness are beyond what I comprehend as large. They stretch out ahead of me–of you–in this new year…endlessly. Yet, they are doled out to us only in bite-size apportionments: “new every morning”.
Not that God couldn’t give us more at a time. I think it must simply be that we couldn’t handle more of His goodness and of His wise pouring out of custom-made love into our lives than just one day’s worth at a time.
It is standing in that place of realization, of recognition of Love’s fingerprints already marking this new year’s moments that the Light which brings hope begins to glow steadily in my heart and in my sight.
Happy New Year.
Bless your heart, Amy. I am so glad that you persevered through this past year and that you will continue to do so this year as well. I hope that the new seasons you’ve encountered (being a grandma, teaching school at Ivy Tech and no longer teaching school at home, facing the end of Michael’s work at Taylor, etc.) have been a blessing along with the challenges that they present/ed. As I sit here typing away in a hotel in Georgia having made it here at all (I’ve backed out of trips like this one in the past, but not this one! 🙂 ), had safe travel across hundreds of miles, and am anticipating greatness as the first main session will take place tonight, I am very grateful that God faithfully continues the work He began in me. I have grown a lot and have more growing to do and am glad to say that I am slowly but surely learning how to better and more easily embrace the things, people and circumstances that come my way, all of them presenting opportunities for me to lean in closer to the Vinedresser to listen to His whisperings of truth and bask in His love. Love you.